Author: Hiro Matsuda was a tough-as-nails wrestler, trainer and hailed as the man who broke Hulk Hogan’s leg the first time he stepped into the ring. According to Hogan, anyway! His journey was difficult, but his path to success is fascinating. And about humbling a young Hulk Hogan? We dive into this, too!
* After reading this article, Hiro Matsuda’s family privately reached out to us and answered some questions left to fan interpretation in the endless lore that is professional wrestling. 20+ years after we lost Matsuda, we are provided with some closure. Read through to the end of this article to read this update.
"It wasnโt like WWE’s Tough Enough. Thatโs a babysitting service compared to what Hiro Matsuda put you through. Matsudaโs camp was the real deal, the real boot camp. There were days when I wanted to cry because I didnโt know what new torture Matsuda was going to devise for me."
โ Hulk Hogan
Breaking in Hulk Hogan – The Story of Hiro Matsuda
In the early-seventies, Terry Bollea was far away from becoming arguably the most famous wrestler of all time: Hulk Hogan (but for this article, heโll be called Hogan throughout to stay consistent).
Besides playing music in a band and working out at the gym, Hogan was pursuing a possible banking career in Tampa, Florida, for $3.75 an hour.
As part of his training, he looked through many files, and some of them were of wrestlers from the area where he noticed that as far back as 1971, some were making twelve to fifteen thousand dollars a week. This pushed the future "Hulkster" to find out more about how he too could get into this lucrative sport.
He began to haunt the Imperial Room, the wrestlerโs Tuesday night hangout after the matches, trying to talk to them and get an inside tip on how to get trained. After a while, he had made enough contacts to speak to Mike Graham (son of Florida promoter Eddie Graham).
One night, Mike took Hogan to the barโs parking lot and told him he could set him up with Hiro Matsuda.
Other more recent sources claim Gerry Brisco encountered Hogan playing with his band at a bar called The Other Place and hooked him up with a tryout. Gerry and Jack Brisco often saw a young Hogan in the crowd at the Tuesday night wrestling shows at the Armory.
Hiro would ensure he was in shape, and if he could pass his tests, he might have a chance.
Hogan was so excited about this opportunity that he quit the band he played for, dropped out of college, and sold all his books because he was sure heโd become a star in the ring. But Eddie Graham wasnโt setting Hogan up for a training session.
Hogan needed to be taught that getting into wrestling wasnโt for everybody, and the wrestlers already inside wouldnโt make it easy for wannabes.
The sport was a close-knit business, and there was no way that a long-haired weightlifter who played in a rock-and-roll band who had not paid any dues by at least being an accomplished amateur wrestler would get a free pass, not in Matsudaโs gym known as "The Snake Pit."
Hulk Hogan decided to take a shot at wrestling even though he was part of a band and going to college at the time.
Watch early footage from 1977 of Hulk Hogan training to become a wrestler:
According to his autobiography, Hollywood Hulk Hogan, Matsuda wrested six days a week and put students through the grinder on his only day off. This meant that he didnโt have the best of dispositions.
However, in his posthumous autobiography, The Hiro Matsuda Stories: Samurai Spirit, written by his daughter Stephanie Kojima, Matsuda described it differently.
He said he was only wrestling part-time by then, but he trained "those boys" (Hulk Hogan, Paul Orndorff, and Brian Blair) five mornings a week.
Matsuda estimates that one out of every twenty trained in his gym didnโt eventually quit, but he never charged any money either. This wasnโt a business to him.
He was entrusted with looking for talent and weeding out students who didnโt have what it took to be in the business.
He could drive his students as hard as he wanted because he didnโt charge a fee, and they could simply leave if they didnโt like it. But if they could endure his training, he knew they could become great.
"They [Hogan, Orndorff, and Blair] showed great potential because they could keep up with me,” Hiro Matsuda recounts in his autobiography, Samurai Spirit. “Sometimes, they had a hard time, but they never said that they could not continue. They tried their best to keep up. I was twice as old as they were.
"I kept telling them, ‘Keep up with me!’ If they could not, they would feel very ashamed. Therefore, they kept up with me very well. To become a good wrestler, you had to have it in you from the heart. It is easy to become a professional wrestler, but if you want to work the main event, you must have guts and determination.
"In order to make determination, you have to go through the grinding mill to build endurance. Also, your mind has to be very strong. I gave those boys a great opportunity, not just the physical training but the mental training, too.ย After four months of intensive training, they passed my test. I started showing them wrestling moves in the ring."
Notice above, Matsuda says: "After four months of intensive training, they passed my test." But didn’t Hulk Hogan once claim Hiro Matsuda broke his leg on the first day of training?
Hogan quickly learned that thereโs a huge difference between weightlifting shape and wrestling shape.
During Matsuda’s workout, he got to the point where he felt his legs were like rubber and that he would soon faint. Stories of thousands of push-ups, squats, and sit-ups are common lore when training with Matsuda. Next, it was time for Hogan to wrestle.
Did Hiro Matsuda really break Hulk Hogan’s leg?
Hulk Hogan recalls in his autobiography, Hollywood Hulk Hogan, "Before I knew it, Matsuda was sitting down between my legs and putting his elbow in the middle of my shin. Then he grabbed the end of my toe and twisted my foot until-crack!-my shinbone broke in half. The whole thing took about two seconds.
“I was hurt and confused. I didn’t know why Matsuda had done that to me. I had a lot to learn."
Hogan mentions afterward that he believes that this was the right protocol at the time. Few were allowed into the sport, and even if you endured these torturous training sessions, it just meant that you had the invitation to show up the next day for another beating.
Trainers like Hiro Matsuda were gatekeepers of the sport and weeded out people he believed didnโt deserve to be in wrestling, and HE would decide when your dues had been paid.
Hogan believed that if heโd been a former amateur wrestler with some credentials, the proper thing wouldโve been to beat him down and wear him out. But since he hadnโt paid his dues and had no wrestling credentials, he needed to prove how badly he wanted it.
So what has Hiro Matsuda said about the infamous leg-breaking incident that Hogan has told repeatedly? Well, quite frankly, nothing. At least not in his official autobiography, anyway. There is NO mention of this event in his book.
So what’s the story here? Did he purposely omit to tell this story to his family during his final days before he succumbed to cancer in 1999? Or did he mention it, but his daughter decided not to include it in the autobiography?
Further, is there a possibility that the incident never happened? Or it did, but was it just an accident?
While Matsuda neglected to tell the one thing that most fans remember him by, he did have this to say about Hogan in his book.
"His name was Terry Bollea when I first met him. He was playing in a musical band in Tampa. He was a nice-looking, big boy. He came to the wrestling office. He said he wanted to become a professional wrestler.
“I told him, ‘I will give you the opportunity if you can keep up with me.’ He agreed, ‘Yes, I will keep up with you, Mr. Matsuda.’ He was one of my protรฉgรฉs and became the most famous wrestler in the U.S."
As Hogan tells it in his book, after his leg was in a cast for about ten weeks (more recent sources dispute this length of time and claim it was a severely sprained ankle and not a fracture), instead of putting his aspirations to become a wrestler aside and pursuing any other way to make a living, Hogan decided to go back to Matsudaโs gym with a new, shorter haircut and a different attitude.
Three months would go by, and trainers beat Hogan up again, stretched his ligaments to their limits, chipped his teeth, tore a bunch of muscles, twisted his knee, and even injured his neck.
Still, little by little, the hatred in their eyes softened when they saw that Hogan wasnโt going anywhere and wasnโt quitting. Also, Hogan would be prepared to block their advances if they attempted to break his leg again.
"I just remember being in excruciating pain and hearing the Briscos laugh at me. I was their favorite form of entertainment. Iโm glad I was able to brighten their day because they sure werenโt brightening mine."
Trainers continued roughing up Hogan for months, but he was slowly earning respect. Matsudaโs scowl lessened a little, and he lightened up with him week by week. The two even had some normal conversations between the torture sessions.
Hogan was on the verge of quitting his dream of becoming a professional wrestler due to going broke. He lived in a hotel room, and had sold his van, all his musical equipment, and everything heโd accumulated for the past ten years.
During this trying time, an old-timer named Charlie Laye stepped in to tell him to hang in there and that heโd never seen anybody go through what Hogan was experiencing.
Finally, Eddie Graham, a former Southern Heavyweight Champion, told Hogan he would go to the training facility and show him some things.
Hogan feared the worst, but he got together with Eddie, and thatโs when his world changed.
Hogan was explained that wrestling was a cooperation between the wrestlers: "a work," not a "shoot." Itโs not the tougher guy who wins; the winner is predetermined.
Hogan also claimed that he now understood that they just wanted to ensure that nobody could pin his shoulders to the mat unless he wanted them to and that he would take care of himself outside of the ring and even in Japan if needed.
Now he could see that Matsudaโs intentions were in the right place, but it was still difficult for Hoganโs mind to grasp that wrestling wasnโt about being a badass. It was about putting on a good show and working together to please the fans.
"Eddie Graham told me something I did want to hear. Finally, I had paid my dues. I was going to start wrestling for real. I see now that they were doing the right thing for me. But at the time, I was devastated."
What Events Shaped Hiro Matsuda?
His real name was Yasuhiro Kojima, but he obtained the name Hiro Matsuda in St. Joseph, Missouri, in the early sixties from promoter Gust Karras.
According to his autobiography Samurai Spirit, Karras told him that when he wrestled in the early thirties, he knew an accomplished middleweight wrestler named Marty Matsuda (probably meant Matty Matsuda, widely known in El Paso, Texas), and Kojima reminded him of Marty. So Karras wanted to name him Matsuda in his honor.
Yasuhiro was then shortened to "Hiro": Hiro Matsuda.
But his story begins much earlier as a child, from 1945 to 1952, when heโd see American soldiers staying in Japan during the Occupation after World War II.
They seemed very rich to him because theyโd ride in their own special car when riding the train and had chocolate, candies, and chewing gum that theyโd even give to children sometimes.
He wondered what kind of country the United States was that had such abundance.
When he saw professional wrestling on television, he thought that it might be his way out of Japan so he could see the world and not stay stuck living in the structured system it was known for.
As a child, Matsuda was lucky to survive the U.S. B29 bombardments during WWII. Hellfire still rained down even after being sent to the countryside to live with his uncle.
He recalls the huge craters left behind by the deadly bombs. When they filled up with water after a rainstorm, he and several children would swim in them.
After the war, while living in a shack on a small field, his parents sold vegetables on a stand.
"If we could have something to eat, we were very lucky. Most of the time, we only had a small amount of rice."
One of his fondest memories with his father was selling vegetables in Tokyo. When they could make a profit, his father stopped at a noodle stand and bought him food.
Once in school, he fought with another kid and returned home crying.
His father told him, "A boy never cries when coming home; this means you have no honor." From then on, he never lost a fight with anyone, and the other kids started obeying his orders.
As an 18-year-old senior in high school, he vividly remembers one day seeing professional wrestling for the first time on TV.
Former sumo wrestler Rikidลzan faced either Ben or Mike Sharpe. This was when he decided to drop baseball, which he had been pursuing then, and instead pushed himself to become a professional wrestler.
In 1956, accompanied by two of his high school friends, Hiro went to Rikidลzanโs house. When the young wrestler who answered the door saw that he had a good-sized body, he was let inside.
To his amazement, everyone was eating in the dining room, and the table was overflowing with food, even beef and chicken!
Rikidลzan told him he had to eat, which was the first time heโd tried beef. His family could not afford meat, so he ate as much as possible and was invited the next day to his gym to start training.
Matsuda participated in his first summer tour with the wrestlers as a second to the visiting American talent.
This meant heโd guide them to the ring before the match and lead them back to the locker rooms afterward. Of course, this was on top of the ring setup and breakdown duties.
On the old-fashioned steam engine train theyโd travel into the different towns on, he rode with the other young boys who had to sit and sleep on newspapers on the floor. But he didnโt mind because he had a stomach full of food and enjoyed the sights.
His main goal was to train as hard as possible and eventually compete in the United States.
With the hours of training, food, and the occasional beers from trainers Yoshihara and Yoshino Sano, Matsuda gained 33 lbs and was now up to 220.
The intense training heโd later give his students in the U.S. stemmed from the rigorous workouts "imposed" by his trainers in Japan early in his career.
Matsudaโs first match was against a 5th-degree black belt who had challenged Rikidลzan, but he allowed Matsuda to "take care of him" instead. Once, he defeated him (legit, not a work, according to his book), and what should have been a reason to celebrate his victory instead was met with his sensei’s disdain.
"I was hoping Rikidลzan would praise me for the victory. When he saw me in the dressing room, he slapped my face several times. I had no idea why he slapped me. He shouted, ‘Kojima! Why didnโt you play around with that karate guy longer?’ย I thought, ‘I was fighting for my life for you!’
I did not say this because I must respect my sensei. I was boiling mad, infuriated. I wanted to rage an attack on him. Toyonoboli, another big wrestler in Japan, saw my anger. He grabbed me and carried me away.
"He told me, ‘Master Rikidลzan was very happy with your performance, but he does not know how to show his appreciation to you. That is the way he is.’ To me, this did not matter. I lost full respect for him."
The tension between sensei and the student finally reached the breaking point when Rikidลzan told him he needed to get bigger to go to the United States.
He believed for Matsuda to become a real pro wrestler, he first needed to make a name for himself by being a good sumo wrestler or judo master. This is when he quit and promised to prove he did not have to go to sumo school to become a famous American-style wrestler.
He began training in freestyle wrestling, judo, and karate but no longer with Rikidลzan.
Hiro’s goal to wrestle in the States almost didnโt happen because Japan was a developing country back then, and most people were not allowed to leave or carry American dollars. You could not use the Japanese yen to buy a ticket.
Instead, you needed to go through the Minister of Finance to get a sponsor. This was easier said than done, and few prevailed. Eventually, a person who was a good friend of Matsuda’s mother helped Hiro immigrate to Peru by using his influential ties in Japan to help him obtain a visa.
"When I left Japan in 1960, I told my parents, ‘I have a one-way ticket. If I never make a success of my dream, I will never step on Japanese soil again."
Max Aguirre, a wrestling promoter in Peru, became his sponsor. After wrestling in Peru for around four months, he went to Mexico, where he eventually met Black "Blackie" Guzman, the brother of legendary Mexican luchador El Santo.
He made a deal with him: He would get his visa to enter the U.S. under the agreement that Matsuda would pay him thirty percent of the money he earned after expenses.
Once in the United States, Matsuda gained the most experience wrestling in a more American style while working in Oklahoma.
Itโs also where he met the blind promoter Leroy McGuirk. Matsuda began drawing well because he was "beating up" the American heroes.
This made the fans hate him, and, in turn, they purchased tickets. Everything was leading to an eventual match with Oklahoma wrestling hero Danny Hodge.
McGuirk would go on to introduce Matsuda to Ed “Strangler” Lewis. Although Lewis was in his later years, Matsuda was very interested in how wrestling used to be and wanted to learn as much as possible from this legendary shooter.
He also met his future partner, Duke Keomuka, in Texas. He and Duke would later win four NWA World Tag Titles (Florida version).
Still building the anticipation for a Hiro Matsuda versus Danny Hodge World Junior Heavyweight Championship match, the promoter thought it would be interesting to pit the new NWA World Heavyweight champion Pat OโConner, who had beaten Buddy Rogers two weeks before, against Matsuda. They had a memorable 60-minute draw.
Due to fan interference and a near-riot, the first Matsuda versus Hodge singles bout had no winner, and Hodge retained his title.
They met a second time, and to the fanโs relief, Hodge beat Matsuda cleanly after 45 minutes. Hiro was off to Florida after The Kentuckian (Grizzly Smith, father of Jake Roberts) recommended him to promoter Cowboy Luttrall because he saw that he was drawing well in Oklahoma.
In Florida, Matsuda met The Great Malenko, Eddie Graham, Don Curtis, and Yukon Eric.
He shocked everyone when he became the Southern Heavyweight champion by beating Eddie Graham. He was also chosen to wrestle Lou Thesz on one of his trips to Florida.
"Winning and losing meant nothing when I was wrestling an opponent like Lou Thesz,” Matsuda shares in his book. “To me, he was like a god."
In 1963, his matches with Eddie Graham became the biggest drawing cards in Florida. But that same year, Matsuda took a 2-3 month extended leave to train with the legend Karl Gotch. This had a strong influence on how he later trained his students.
It was a case of an older wrestler pushing the younger one to his peak. Matsuda remembered these tough workouts with no modern facilities or equipment in cold weather. He later applied some of this philosophy to his unforgiving training in the Sportatorium’s “Snake Pit.”
This was also when he learned about the death of his former sensei Rikidลzan from peritonitis (inflammation of the inner lining of the abdomen’s inner wall) due to a stabbing in a nightclub.
Matsuda admits that this caused him to lose focus and motivation for a while because he wanted to wrestle Rikidลzan and prove to him in person that heโd made it in the U.S. on his own terms and was training with legendary wrestler Karl Gotch. Now, his focus became only on earning money, not improving his skills or proving his former trainer wrong.
Matsudaโs reputation grew exponentially after renewing his rivalry with Hodge in Florida and winning the Junior Heavyweight Championship in 1964.
This victory made Matsuda the first Japanese pro wrestler to hold an NWA singles title.
By 1969, Matsuda stopped wrestling full-time and helped promote the Florida territory.
Once a minority shareholder within the company, he and its many other partners helped run Championship Wrestling From Florida (CWF).
He even participated in "The Battle For Atlanta" in 1972, siding with the NWA against Ann Gunkel’s “outlaw” outfit. He sent wrestlers to reinforce the gutted Georgia territory, which helped turn the tide in their favor and regain control.
By 1976, Hiro Matsuda mostly focused on helping run CWF and training future talent.
But after majority shareholder Eddie Graham’s chilling suicide in 1985, Matsuda stepped up and took charge fully until its closing in 1987 and the eventual collapse of the formerly dominant NWA.
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How Peers Felt About Hiro Matsuda
According to Brian Blair, Matsuda never stopped training. Even in his 60s, he could do hundreds of push-ups and squats.
Blair, who wrestled as one half of the Killer Bees with Jim Brunzell in the WWF during the mid-โ80s, said in an AP News article after the passing of Matsuda, "We never knew wrestling as sports entertainment. He trained us to believe weโd have to fight for our lives. He used to kick us and say, ‘Come on, boys, Iโm an old man, and you canโt even keep up with me!'”
Many other respected veterans of the ring mirrored Blair’s words and added positive thoughts to this Mike Mooneyham column.
"He was all class and a wonderful person," says Terry Funk. "His word was so good you could always count on it. But at the same time, in the wrestling ring as a shooter, he was a tough SOB. There was just nobody any tougher. His type of guy will be deeply missed in the wrestling business."
"There was no other finer man in the world than Hiro Matsuda," admits Jerry Brisco.
"Iโll always remember him; heโll be very dear to my heart. Iโll tell my kids and grandkids about him because he was a wonderful, wonderful person. No matter what phase of life youโre talking about, Matsuda was the man.”
"Some guys were great in the ring. Hiro Matsuda was class from the ring to his personal life," Cowboy Bill Watts confesses, whose career is often intertwined with Matsudaโs in the Oklahoma, Florida, and Atlanta territories.
"You could count on his word. His word was his bond. He was just a very special person."
"He was the franchise wrestling backbone of the Florida territory as a heel before Jack Brisco," adds former NWA world champion Dory Funk Jr.
"But he was also the Florida policeman, the policeman at the gate. Anyone who wanted to enter the business had to go through Hiro Matsuda first. Weโd turn them loose with Matty and find out if they really wanted to be wrestlers. Consequently, we didnโt have a lot of guys come into the business at that time."
For now, Hogan is sticking to his story.
On November 27, 1999, Hiro Matsuda sadly passed away in Tampa, Florida, after a battle with colon cancer.
Arguably, Matsudaโs claim to fame for this generation and in the future is that he broke Hoganโs leg to protect the business. I wonder if Hiro’s daughter, Stephanie Kojima, author of her father’s autobiography, knows something that we donโt.
“No matter how famous the boys I trained became, they showed their appreciation of what I gave to them. When they thanked me, that was my satisfaction. My idea was to discourage the boys so they would quit. I worked the boys hard to see if they had the determination and the guts to be a great wrestler. Without this, there was no way to make it to the top.”
โ Hiro Matsuda
Watch Hiro Matsuda Getting "Sleeper Happy" in 1987:
Hiro Matsuda was a Legacy Inductee for the 2018 WWE Hall Of Fame and is also in the Florida Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Some of the wrestlers who survived Matsuda’s merciless training are Mike Graham, Steve Keirn, “Dirty” Dick Slater, Bob Roop, Hulk Hogan, "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff, “Killer Bee” B. Brian Blair, Lex Luger, Ron Simmons, "Cowboy" Bob Orton, Ray Fernandez (Hercules), Scott Hall, and Ed "The Bull" Gantner.
An Update from Hiro Matsuda’s Family: Did He Really Break Hulk Hogan’s Leg?
After reading this article, Hiro Matsuda (Yasuhiro Kojima) ‘s family privately reached out to us and answered some questions that have been left to fan interpretation in the endless lore that is professional wrestling. Twenty-plus years after we lost Matsuda, we are provided with some closure.
The incident in question has sparked discussion and controversy among fans. Did Hiro Matsuda really break Hulk Hoganโs leg?
Hogan has repeatedly made this claim, but for some reason, it was omitted from Matsuda’s autobiography, leaving many to wonder if this truly happened or if it was just another fabrication in the long list of wrestling tall tales. Hogan has told this story on various occasions, and it is accepted as truthโbut is it really? Or was this just a story Hogan made up to put himself over?
We wondered why this was not discussed in Matsudaโs book when everything else was mentioned in meticulous detail.
His daughter, Stephanie Kojima, author of The Hiro Matsuda Stories: Samurai Spirit, contacted us to dispel this misinformation once and for all.
"Matsuda did tell his wife Judy (my mother) that he indeed broke Hulk Hoganโs leg. To be more exact, it was the lower part of his leg and not the ankle as some people claim, and it definitely wasnโt just a sprain."
This would indicate that the tibia or fibula bone was broken. Again, other more recent sources claim it was a badly sprained ankle, bad enough to send Hogan away for a couple of weeks, but Hiro’s daughter believes otherwise and told us it was worse than “just a sprain.”
She continues, "As the gatekeeper of the Florida territory, Mike Graham and some of the other boys sent prospective students to be tested physically through harsh training to see if they were good candidates to become professional wrestlers.
“You know the term "stretching," although he never used this term with me. They were not charged any fee for the training, but at the same time, this allowed my father the right to get rid of them at any time. But I can assure you that my father was very happy and proud when his students passed his training because they deserved it."
So why didn’t the book include the Hulk Hogan broken leg incident/injury? She explains.
"He did not tell me about the incident, and I believe it was not included in recounting his life because a wrestler back then didnโt talk about those particulars to people not in the business. This is one way that they protected it.”
This book was published in 2019, but in 1999, when Matsuda was relaying these stories to his daughters for his book, kayfabe still had a pulse within the industry.
Stephanie continues, “Also, maybe he didnโt want me, his daughter, to know about it. The little he told me about Hulk Hogan is in the book.
“He briefly mentioned the incident to my mother, Judy. When I asked her if my father told her why he did it or asked for further details from him, I was told that once my father told you something but didnโt offer any details afterward, one did not insist on further information.
“He was a man of few words and not a braggadocious person. There doesnโt seem to be a public record of the incident, or at least, it never left the training center on account of the people who were there that day. Iโm not sure who was there to witness all of it."
When the doctors told Hiro that he had cancer and no way of knowing how long he had left to live, he asked his family to get him a book on positive thinking and a book about death.
He never stopped fighting to achieve his goals in life. Stephanie says that her dad gave her only one piece of advice: a Japanese proverb that says, "Fall down seven times, stand up eight."
Before we got off the phone, a thread on the Facebook group The Hiro Matsuda Stories was brought up. In this thread, fans speculated whether or not Matsuda intentionally or accidentally broke Hoganโs leg during his training.
When we asked her whether her father broke Hogan’s leg intentionally or by accident, Stephanie did not hesitate to respond with a stoic calmness in her voice. "My dad did everything with intent."
The Hiro Matsuda Stories: Samurai Spirit, written by his daughter Stephanie Kojima, is available for purchase.
These stories may also interest you:
- Terry Bollea | How Hulk Hogan Got Discovered Playing Bass at a Nightclub
- Marvel Comics and the Money They Made off Hulk Hogan
- 6 Wrestlers Share Painful Horror Stories Of Breaking Into the Business
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